photo & text excerpt:
by Marcus Chown
SuperKamiokande, Japan
The Sun as you've never seen it before: This picture was taken at night! It was taken looking down through the Earth!
And it was taken not with light but with neutrinos! Neutrinos are ghostly subatomic particles produced as a
byproduct of the nuclear reactions that that generate sunlight in the heart of the Sun . Whereas light
takes about 30,000 years to work its way from the centre of the Sun to the surface,
neutrinos take about 2 seconds. Eight minutes later they arrive
on Earth. So neutrinos show us what is
happening in the Sun now